On the 27th of December 1996, I dove into the Tukituki River and broke my neck. I was 16 years of age. My name is Patrick Bronte, and I am a tetraplegic. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2019 The spinal surgeon, he says in very broken English, 'You're not gonna be walking again. 'You get yourself around with a chin-controlled wheelchair.' What? 'Nah, mate. I'm gonna walk outta here,' and then burst into tears. I'm just a piece of meat now. I'm nothing. You know, if someone asked me the question, you know, 'Would you change it?' it'd be a pretty hard decision to make. (TAPE REWINDS) I believe I grew up in a traditional Kiwi household. I mean, we lived on a 600-acre, 700-acre farm. You've got trees; you've got hay barns; you've got all sorts of different terrain to play in. I was mad on eeling, I can tell you that. I couldn't have asked for anything better. (GRAND, ADVENTUROUS MUSIC) You know, I was forever making tree huts, building forts out of battens, generally being a one-man army. The farm was the battlefield ` you know, whether I was a knight, World War II soldier or World War I soldier, a cowboy. He was a good, imaginative player. We used to make little costumes for him out of tea towels and things like that. And Roger made him a few guns. He'd spend an afternoon making me a gun out of an old axe handle. He'd get a bit of steel pipe for the barrel. It was pretty` pretty cool. When I got my first slug gun, I was about 11. Mum didn't feel I was quite old enough, but Dad did. Hang on. Well, I've got a scar there where some... pellet gun pellet must have ricocheted off, but, no, nobody lost an eye. (LAUGHS) No. There was one occasion, which Dad was ahead of me and some ducks came over. You know, it was just above him, and I shot it. (GUNSHOT) And he went ballistic. ...kill ya. Your behaviour's been shocking. We spent a couple hours in silence, decided to pack it in and went home. But just as we got in the gate towards the house, he just sort of said to me in quite a quiet tone, 'That was a bloody good shot.' He was quite a gregarious type of guy. He wasn't the traditional farmer; he was right into theatre, both as an actor and a director. Yeah, he was very theatrical and open and kind. He was very, very generous, but he was also firm and definitely was the disciplinarian. My parents decided to send me to boarding school, because they felt that the disruptive nature that I had in the classroom could be curtailed by going to, you know, a strict boarding school. I was never happy about him going away to school, but Roger and I talked about it and decided to give it a couple of years just to see how he went. He did well academically, but there was a real downside to it too. You know, boys that were in a year above you, you know, were able to bully you without, you know, too much repercussions. You know, they'd melt a cup of butter, make you drink that, and then run round this 400m circuit until you threw up. He was not happy. So that was the end of the fifth form. He'd had a very good year academically, and so we decided to bring him home to go to CHB College, where he should've gone right from the start, really. (ROCK MUSIC) It was a really great time, because it was a coed school, for a start. Had a girlfriend ` you know, like, a steady one. Had friends that were girls. And, you know, we'd socialise a lot. Paddy was fun to be around. People gravitated towards him. He was a fun, bubbly character. There was always someone trying to rustle up a party each weekend; end up going to the beach ` we'd camp out there, maybe partake in... some form of... intoxication. I used to despair sometimes, because... Well, for example, he told me he was having singing lessons. And I don't know what he was doing, but he wasn't having singing lessons. So, I mean, I was suspended within a month of being at that school, because, you know, I drove downtown at lunchtime with passengers on my restricted licence. He was, unfortunately, always the one that got caught doing stuff, (CHUCKLES) whether it was crashing his friend's mother's car, which... not ideal ` Dad hit the roof with that one ` or nicking cigarettes; we both stole them from our parents. I'd usually pinch one of Dad's smokes and have it as I was walking down the driveway to catch the bus. And oddly enough, I'd get busted by Dad, who was way over by the woolshed, but he could see this little figure and this big puff of smoke coming out. Your behaviour's been shocking. You wait till your mother... There was definitely a lot of tension and arguing ` Dad and Patrick clashing about... I think just responsibilities and grown-up privileges. I developed a very, very destructive anger problem towards my parents, particularly my father. More than likely it was resentment for him sending me away, making me go to this boarding school. He was going to have some counselling for this anger. And before he could keep the appointment, he had... this accident. End of the sixth-form year was great. It was summer; it was really hot, and we just spent days, days, days skating around. So 27th December 1996 ` standard day. It was a real hot, Hawke's Bay summer's day ` real, you know, nice day. We'd been skateboarding around in town in the morning. By about 11 o'clock, we were pretty hot and bothered and over it. (ROCK MUSIC) We decided, you know, needed to cool off, so we decided to go down to the river, down to the Tukituki for a swim. So we piled into Roger's ute that Paddy had. (CHUCKLES) This particular swimming hole ` beautiful spot, and the willow trees were growing sort of sideways out over the river. That's where we would jump off into the hole. Oh, we were just mucking around, and, no, we'd been jumping in, and then Paddy climbed up the tree to` sort of on to the branch of the willow. This time, I chose to dive into the river. I had done before, but that was from the bank, and it was nowhere near as high as the willow trees. (SPLASH!) Bang. Obviously, hit the bottom. (HEARTBEAT THUMPS) And that's when life for me changed forever. * I dove a bit too vertical... and missed the deepest part of the hole. Straight away knew... that something was extremely wrong. Initially, there was a lot of pain. If you were to imagine that all your veins, capillaries within your system were made out of piano wire, and then just got pulled out through your toes. And the funny thing that I remember was that you kinda know... straight away,... and that's it. (WATER BURBLES) I was down in the water. I just thought he was mucking around. He just didn't come up. I can hear them talking, all that sort of stuff, and I'm thinking, 'Come on, guys. Come on, guys. Come on, guys.' And I started drifting... out of the pool, down and towards the rapids. After the initial pain of not being able to breathe passed, I developed a euphoric feeling throughout my body. My life didn't flash before my eyes or any of that sort of stuff. But what did happen was that the water became crystal clear. Trout were swimming underneath me. The stones were sparkling. I can't explain what I saw,... but in my peripheral, there was a light. And then I hear, 'Give him a kick to make sure he's not taking the piss.' Um, I don't` didn't feel that kick. We sorta found him, cos it a little` probably a bit murky. Right? And then I remember just pulling him up, and he was sorta` he was panicking, not choking, but, you know, he'd been underwater for quite a while, just going, 'I can't feel my legs,' you know, or, 'I can't feel my body,' and things like that. The water wasn't crystal clear, the euphoria had gone, and the pain had kicked in. I sort of was like, you know, 'If you're mucking around, if you're taking the piss,' you know, 'If this is serious, we've gotta do something.' All I could say was, 'I'm not gonna be able to walk again. 'I'm never gonna be able to walk again. I'm never gonna be able to walk again.' Jumped in Roger's ute, shot back into town. We had no cell phones back then. So, you know, it was landline, landline, landline. Got the ambulance to come down, and then, yeah, Paddy was like, 'Can you go get my folks?' (PHONE RINGS) And I had a phone call from Tom's mother, who said to me, 'Oh, Patrick's had an accident at the river.' I got on the phone, and Mum said, 'Look, Patrick's had an accident. Don't know how bad it is. 'Can you come home now?' And I said, 'Is everything OK?' She goes, 'I don't know.' And so I just dropped everything and ran. By the time the ambulances turned up, Mum was there also. In the meantime, the paramedic that had come over started to poke my toes with his scissors, asking me if you can feel this, 'Can you feel that?' And it's like, no, no. All I could feel at that stage was pain. I'm talking about full-on being plugged into a power socket. And I think in a meek, desperate way, I asked them the question, 'Will I be able to walk again?' And then he gave me a shot of something for the pain. I don't know what it was, but after he'd given me that shot, that's when I sort of started drifting in and out a bit. (HELICOPTER ROTORS WHIRR) They put me into one of their emergency stretchers, put a neck brace on, and then winched me into the chopper, and I said gidday to each of the guys, and... then blacked out. (HELICOPTER ROTORS WHIRR) My next memory comes as we land at Hastings Hospital. It was just like a scene out of ER or, you know, one of those medical dramas. You know, you're crashing through the doors; someone's standing next to you with a drip; you're, sort of, 'One, two, three,' you're lifted over on to the plinth. They put me into traction, and in order to do so, they had to... drill into my skull in order to attach a headband. I can remember hearing the drill and feeling the vibrations in my head. It was almost like a rotisserie cage, and he was sort of in it. He said, 'Mum, I can't feel my legs.' Yeah. I-I remember being really, really upset and thinking, 'What... What is this gonna mean?' The registrar... called us into his office and said, 'We think he's broken his neck.' After three days, the decision was made to fly me down to Christchurch in order to be taken into the Burwood Spinal Unit. The first contact I had with any spinal specialist in those initial days at Burwood was with a foreign doctor who was quite new to the spinal unit who came in to see me; I was on my own. You know, I was a minor. And... he says in very broken English, 'You're not gonna be walking again. You get yourself around with a chin-controlled wheelchair.' And I was like, 'What? 'Nah, mate. I'm gonna walk outta here,' and then burst into tears. (SOMBRE MUSIC) Everyone thinks they drive well. (HELICOPTER BLADES WHIRR, POLICE RADIO CHATTER) But I've never seen anyone crash well. MAN: That speed's fine along here. I know these roads. I know these roads pretty well too, and I'm doing everything in my power to stop you from seeing the things I've seen on them. * So, after hearing from the specialist that I was, you know, gonna be unable to walk again, that's when those five stages of grief kicked in. And for me, the first one was denial. How long is it gonna take me to go through the rehab and get walking again? I've got stuff to do. I've got places to be. That was the attitude. Yeah, and we found out he had a C34 injury to his spinal cord and would probably never walk again. But that's only half of it. Not only can he not walk, he can't use his arms either, so no brain damage, but all the limbs are affected. So, consequently, all the organs ` the bowel, the bladder. You know, it's a horrific, horrific injury. When people would ask me about it, I'd say, 'Well, he can't pick his own nose. Think about that.' There was definitely an element of 'Why me?' Even go into the odd prayer. You know, 'Please, God, can you help me do this? Please, God.' You know? Trying to reason or bargain with him. I was just devastated. I just thought his life was over. Two weeks in, Dad decided to stay and let Mum go home and, you know, have a break. And this is where I really bonded with my father. And I remember saying to him, 'I'm just a piece of meat now. I'm nothing. 'I'm nothing.' And, you know, he broke down. We broke down together. I'm lying in a bed, and he and I are crying together. We're making the odd joke together. What Dad did that made a huge difference, really took my mind off the issue, was he started reading me a book. It was called 'Immediate Action' by Andy McNab, who was in the British SAS. So Dad read this whole book. And it's` You know, it's a military book, so there's lots of swearing in it, and in between times, I'm asking him questions like, you know, 'Dad, why did you make me come home at half-past 3 instead of being able to hang out with my mates?' He went on to explain how he was trying to teach me boundaries, and he went into his whole philosophy on how he was trying to parent me. And that made me understand his actions, and therefore we became very close very quickly. And that bond only grew and grew and grew and grew. He became my best friend ` more than a best friend and more than a parent. And I think that's what tragedy does ` it brings us together. Hi. How's it going? I still had to have quite intensive physiotherapy from a physio that became a real inspiration for me and became my guiding light as far as my rehabilitation. He had no idea what was happening to him. Everyone seems to know that they've broken their neck, and they know it's catastrophic, but they don't know what comes next, and it's that unknown. You either fight it or you spiral down into the depths of despair, and Patrick appeared to be the fighter. She had a great sense of humour, and, you know, she was so natural around me. That positivity, I think, rubbed off on me. I started getting shoulder movement back, started getting stronger. Then one day,... Jennifer just said, 'Try and bend your elbow.' And I'm trying, and I'm like, you know... (GRUNTS SOFTLY) And you see this little flicker of movement. And I was like, 'Hey, it moved!' So I get to the gym for the first time, and the physiotherapist that was assigned to me at that particular moment was a new graduate. She was very bubbly, very lovely woman, very enthusiastic, and that's when anger started coming in. Because I'm thinking, 'What the fuck are you so happy about?' and, like, 'Screw this.' And she said, 'Oh, we'll start off with doing the boxing bag.' And the boxing bag was a pillowcase with a small rubber ball in it. You know, if you're gonna put a boxing bag in front of someone who's pretty angry, they're gonna want to punch the shit out of that. And I could only... just tap the bottom part of the pillowcase. So it just seemed like such a futile exercise for me, and it was like, 'Well, what's the point of this?' It was exceedingly difficult in the beginning, because he only had one muscle to work. So, as a 16-year-old boy, you need to keep him amused and engaged and try and work one muscle many different ways over the course of his inpatient rehab. Jennifer told me, 'You can work eight hours a day, seven days a week, 'working on your limbs that have very limited mobility, but what would be better ` 'working on that or working on one of the greatest muscles the human body possesses ` 'the brain?' And that's what I did. And, although I had very difficult times during that process, I had a new opportunity in life to prove that I wasn't a little shit. So all that... attitude and arrogance and disrespect for rules and authority just flew out the window. A lot of rehab is not just the physical rehab; it's about teaching the person a new life with a wheelchair in it. And they help introduce you to the big, wide world where... all people see is the chair. It's about showing everybody that they're more than a wheelchair; they're a person. And when you ignore the wheelchair, other people ignore the wheelchair too. I remember one day and this guy wheeling in a wheelchair saying, 'You know, mate,... 'guys in wheelchairs, they always get girlfriends.' I was very, very fortunate to have some really good friends come and visit me. THOM: You know, he was in the hospital, and he was in a wheelchair, and he was gonna be a tetraplegic ` or he was a tetraplegic, and` but it was still just, 'Oh, well, we're gonna go see Paddy.' Those visits were, you know, really, really... great for morale, and... they just treated me as Patrick. They didn't treat me as 'Patrick in the chair'. When you leave the spinal unit, it's the scariest thing in the world, so friends and family are invaluable, and the more support that someone gets from their friends and family while they're in the unit, the easier it is to transition out of the unit. Those people from Waipukurau that I went to school with made life... very easy as far as going back. You're a teenager, and you're wanting to go to parties, but you wanna go with your mates, and Paddy was a mate, so he was coming. You know, we weren't doing it cos... I dunno, cos we felt sorry for him or anything; you do it cos he's your mate. And there was one night ` I hadn't been home very long ` and there was a party over at Kieran's, and, you know, we all got pretty drunk. They just tried dragging me up these steps, not realising that they were putting me on a 45-degree angle. It was in slow motion ` concrete path that I was being wheeled up just slowly came closer and closer and closer, and then there was a big bang. They sort of freaked out for a moment, and I was like, 'Nah, yeah, nah, nah, I'm all right.' But, no, they were good times. It was a huge time of adjustment. Huge. Just all of the things that you don't know what the day-to-day life of having a family member in that situation entailed. Yeah. Everyday life is... is a struggle, and I'm` I don't say that to be dramatic; I'm just being pragmatic when I say that. It is a struggle. Mum and Dad got really, really sad, and you could see them grieving... for their son who hadn't died. I'd wake up in the morning, um,... and I'd been crying in my dreams. I tried not to, you know, cry or anything in front of Patrick. For sure, my parents were grieving, because I'm not the same Patrick that I was prior to the 27th of December 1996. I did change. It feels like you're reborn in some crazy way, because... the old Patrick's gone. You know, he can't play the hockey that he was so in love with; he can't go skateboarding with his mates; he can't do this; he can't do that; he can't even turn the pages of a book. So, if Patrick had died,... obviously, it would have been devastating to the family, and we would have never recovered. But he` part of him had died. But he was still alive. Roger cried a lot. He, um.... (INHALES SHAKILY) He, uh, used to get very emotional. I think he felt a lot of the pain that I did. I think it really pained him to see his son in the situation that I was in. Their son was not going to have the life that... any of us thought he might have. I, um, felt terribly guilty about the lack of water-safety knowledge. It's such a no-no, diving into rivers. It's huge. I used to teach it at school. And I felt guilty about that for a long time. I wouldn't have been able to get through this without my parents. It's that simple. It would have been easier if I'd had someone to blame ` say I was in a car and a drunk driver crashed into me, and, you know, I ended up as a tetraplegic as a result. But I don't have anyone to blame but myself. So I have to accept the consequences and take responsibility for that. Meet the Roots family - a family with a serious root problem... Roots? ..and a magic solution. Let me show you something. Magic Retouch by L'Oreal Paris - three seconds to flawless roots. Done. Magic Retouch by L'Oreal - because you're worth it. There were a lot of moments over 1998 that I did feel sorry for myself, because I felt that I wasn't able to, you know, progress in life like my friends were ` you know, going away to uni and all that sort of stuff. I felt that, you know, I was just stuck in Waipark and was wondering, 'Well, what the hell do I do with my life now?' Then 'Saving Private Ryan' came out, which, you know, blew me away. So the next morning, I was up at the table, and I said, 'Dad, can you grab as much material as you've got on the D-Day landings?' And so he arranged them all on the table so that I could read them. You know, I'm reading all this material, one of Dad's old mates turns up. I just sort of turned to Bones and said, you know, 'Were you in the war, Bones?' And he said, 'Yeah, I was in the war.' And I said, 'Oh, do you mind talking about it?' And he said, 'Oh, only to those who are interested,' and then looked over at the table and said, 'I can see you are. I'll come out and talk to you, and I'll bring my mate.' Bones would usually take a beer, but Charlie would always take a gin. And these conversations were very animated. They spilled their guts, and they told me everything. You know, Charlie would constantly bang his fist on the table every time he mentioned the Germans, in which he was` referred to them as the Hun. And one stage, Charlie took his shirt off and showed me all the scars from all the bullet wounds and things that he had. And... I sorta thought to myself, 'Man, these guys have gone through a hell of a lot worse things than you have, 'so stop feeling sorry for yourself and sort your shit out and work out a plan.' And that was the prompt that made me think, 'Right. I'm moving out of home, and I'm going to university.' He could've stayed with us forever. But I think he really, really wanted it for himself. And I applaud him for that. That was really... cathartic for me, because... I felt that I wasn't holding them back and I wasn't gonna be a burden on their lives forever. By February 1999, I'd moved over to Palmerston North to go to university with a lot of good friends I had over here. But, unfortunately, by that time, I had developed... a strong dependency on pain medication. And I went to a few lectures, did a couple of assignments, and it got to the point where I just couldn't retain any information; I couldn't really concentrate properly. I needed to get down to Burwood in order to get off these opiates and get on the methadone programme. Within three months, I'd gone from, you know, a shot of pethidine every day, 100mg of morphine a day and a whole bunch of other medications ` slowly weaned off those with the help of the methadone. I was able to give university a second go. And I jumped into that with a huge amount of enthusiasm and thirst for knowledge, and I found subjects that, you know, really interested me ` Introduction to Military History, Introduction to Media Studies were the first two papers I took, and that is when I had the brainwave of going back and recording Bones' and Charlie's story. And the field where the mines had been looked like the field had been harrowed. I just wanted to know more, so I started seeking out World War II veterans that were living in Waipukurau, then looked further afield, and that's when Nga Toa was born. It was very important to capture these men's stories so the public is made aware of what it is that our service men and women have done and still do for our country. It's part of New Zealand's heritage. It plays a big role in the make up of this country. But I learned a lot more about myself and about adversity and about how people get through certain things and how people cope with fear and all those emotions. I mean, through adversity comes a lot of opportunity, and whether you wanna take that opportunity in the most positive direction you can or... sit there and feel sorry for yourself is up to you. In 2002, I had the good fortune to meet a wonderful woman by the name of Julie. She was sent to come and meet me by a caregiving agency. She was pretty easy-going and had a great sense of humour ` you know, something that I don't have. He was very, very positive, really positive. He was just a beautiful human being. And one day, I had a... and I had a sore neck or something, and I got her to rub it. And that's when... I realised that I... I obviously had feelings for her. So then I'd sort of, kind of... repeat that the next time she came, and then the next time she came. And then one thing led to another. I went to the agency that Patrick was under and said, you know, 'I have these feelings for Patrick,' and... they were awesome. 'Just do it.' Yeah. Julie's a laugh-out-loud type, and just the way she laughs makes me laugh. I don't see it as different. I just see it as our normal. You know? This is who I fell in love with. Again, feel very lucky to have met her and subsequently become part of her family. So, we just fight like... Our relationship's just like everyone else ` we have our ups, and we have our downs. There's no difference. Absolutely none. I don't see his wheelchair. I don't see that barrier. We just do things differently, perhaps, sometimes. But, yeah, he's... he's my hero. (PHONE RINGS) Round about 2005, I was doing this ` interviewing veterans, and then I got a phone call. A very highly respected member of the New Zealand SAS Association who served with the SAS in Vietnam, he asked me how I would feel about interviewing the original members of the SAS. I was like, 'What?! 'Holy shit.' How often does that happen? This is like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. First person I rang was Dad. He was over the moon. He was extremely proud, and getting that praise from him... Well, that's fantastic, son. ...made me thirstier. I felt I had a purpose. You know, I was collecting these men's stories, and I felt that I was able to contribute back. In 2008, my father passed away from cancer. So, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the beginning of March, and he was dead by the end of April. And that just... knocked me for six, because... not only had I lost... a great father,... but I'd lost my best mate... and the person that I looked up to the most. SARAH: Patrick was devastated. I... don't know how he coped. Once he'd passed, I did feel that I had... I coped with it quite well, but then, you know, cracks started to form. There's been many times when I'm just like... I'll wake up,... and it's like, 'Oh. That's right. 'I'm a tetraplegic.' My life is a battle. Every day is a battle. Do you think you could just give us a quick push on my stomach? See, this is one of my problems is that I... no stomach muscles, no chest muscles to cough. (CLEARS THROAT) (CLEARS THROAT) I developed a really bad case of pneumonia and was admitted to hospital. Due to the fact that my stomach muscles and chest muscles are paralysed, I'm a diaphragmic breather, and I can't cough. When he's home, I'm... or the support person's right there. So in hospital, he's quite vulnerable. The nurses are in their station, and, you know, walking around. I developed a plug of mucus in my airway... and couldn't breathe. And I had to... I was whacking the bell with my chin, and the nurse comes in, and he says, 'Do you wanna cough? Do you wanna cough?' I said, 'Can't breathe. Can't breathe. Can't breathe.' Then the lights turned out. So I was gone for about two and a half minutes. When I woke up, there were all these doctors. Here's these two guys just finishing the compressions. Said to Mike, I said, 'Oh, what happened then? He just said, 'You just had a cardiac arrest.' So, I improve, just go down to an average ward. And... the same thing happened again ` developed a plug, respiratory arrest leading to cardiac arrest. So, yeah, he did nearly die again. (CHUCKLES DRILY) You know, really dodged a bullet. And then I came home,... and I became` I was petrified of going back into that hospital again. And I think it's post-traumatic stress. Every time he goes in ` I mean, it's more trauma. It's... I just feel that, you know, 'Is this it?' Every time he goes in, it's like... 'Am I bringing him home?' So it just gets kind of worse and worse. And I lost faith in the whole medical system in which I relied so heavily on. (UNSETTLING MUSIC) Depression and anxiety kicked in. I stopped doing the interviews. I felt... all these emotions, which were... kind of strange to, sort of, become so prominent, like, you know, lack of self-worth, felt like I was a strain on the system, self-esteem went. And that just... led me to this... to the darkest place I've ever seen or ever experienced. * The end result of all these feelings led to my own suicide attempt. It was one afternoon. It was... a summer's day. I was very hot. I was in my office, and Julie was just having a bit of a lie down. And I had gave absolutely no sign that I was in any distress in any way. And, you know, I turned the music up loud, snuck off. (LOUD ROCK MUSIC PLAYS) I didn't realise that Patrick was missing, so he went out the front door. (INHALES SHARPLY) So I had no idea that that's how he was feeling. Sat there for a little while. And just couldn't do it. I don't know why I couldn't do it, but I couldn't not move my... I was too scared to do it. It was fear that stopped me doing it. Fear of what? Fear of... not being with Julie. Fear of hurting my mother. Dunno. Just couldn't do it. He came back and said, 'This is what nearly happened. So, yeah, it was quite devastating. I came to understand, like, his pain. You know, I know that it's not easy for Patrick. I know it's really difficult. I feel extremely sad, because... part of me understands why. And the selfish part of me doesn't want him to... not be here. I feel that the decision for me to end it all was the greatest wake-up call I could've ever had, cos it made me think harder about the ones I love and those that love me and the possibilities... that are in the future. I hit the bottom of a river, broke my neck and got on with life for, you know, 14-odd years, and then decided that I'd end it? That was just stupid thinking. Slowly, Patrick rebuilt his life, like, from month to month. (MAN SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY ON VIDEO) The more he got into these war veterans, the more he kind of saw his father in the background. And getting back into interviewing the veterans, is what pulled me out of that... that dark hole that I was in. So that was the second time veterans have pulled me out of a dark space. If you cannot be successful... My biggest fear is that I'm well aware that the life expectancy of a tetraplegic is very much shortened and that I will not be able to finish what I started, and that is honouring those men and women who have served this country with distinction. I just think it's inspirational. Here's this kid who's so... disabled, really, doing this. Amazing. And he's my son,... just by the way. (CHUCKLES SOFTLY) You know, if someone asked me the question, you know, 'Would you change it if could turn back time?' it'd be a pretty hard decision to make and not one that I'd be able to make lightly, because all those great things that have happened to me in the last 20-odd years would disappear. About 2016, I searched the internet far and wide, you know, as much as I could, and was lucky enough to find adaptive shooting equipment. I really wish that Dad would've been able to see me independently shooting now. He would've got such a kick out of it. (GUN FIRES) You know, he'd be over the moon. You know, the human spirit's an interesting thing, because we're such adaptable creatures, and we all have it in us to be able to push through adversity. We all do. It's just a matter of finding it. (GUNSHOT) (GUNSHOT) My name is Patrick Bronte, and I am a tetraplegic. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2019